Friday, January 15, 2010

The Digital Age of Books and Music

First off, welcome to our new followers! Once we hit 60, we will be giving away a book to one lucky follower! Next, an update to our follower free book contest from when we hit 30! I never heard from the original winner, so our NEW winner of Justine Larbalestier's Liar is...

Pagecrawler!

Please email me your address at YAedge @ yahoo.com (without the spaces) by Wednesdsay, January 20th! Congrats!

Now on to our regularly scheduled post:

I don't know about you, but I have a obsession regarding my bookshelf. All books have their place and when I get new ones, I hate to see them pile up without a proper home. It takes constant shifting to get the right thickness and height all in order, along with subject/genre. I'm never happy with the arrangement and each time I walk into our studio, I have to fight myself to walk over and start pulling books of the shelf to reorganize them. Where do you put your Maureen Johnson hardbacks and paperbacks? Do you put them together or do the hardbacks go with others of their kind? Or how about those odd sized books that don't seem to fit anywhere? I'm the crazy that puts hardbacks with hardbacks, trade paperback with other trades and mass with mass paperbacks. The odd shaped/sized ones?...don't even get me started.

Growing up, I had this same situation with CDs, but it was a bit easier. I would alphabetize them by singer/group and then within that, by date of the album. Obsessive? Yes. But, I could almost name every CD I owned because of this. Over time, as I've gotten older, my CDs now sit in huge folders. Once digital download became big, I was less obsessed with keeping track of my collection. I still buy real CDs from time to time at used stores or of the groups/singers I really love, but most of the time I just download the album instantly. Why not? I can buy a CD from the comfort of my home, sitting with my cats on my lap, my dog at my feet and a glass of wine on the table next to me. I can even wear my pajamas!

You're probably wondering where this post is going. As I mentioned last month, I bought Barnes and Noble's new ereader, nook. It is my jump into the digital age of books, one I fought for so long. I LOVE reading on it (one thing I wasn't sure about when I ordered it), but I have SOO many "real" books on my shelf! I am rotating, reading one "real" book, then an ebook and so on.

It makes me wonder, at some point will I want to stop organizing my bookshelf like a madwoman and just turn on my nook and let it do the dirty work for me? I think the answer will always be "no". I love ebooks right now, but they AREN'T the same as cracking open a new or old book, smelling the ink and paper and turning the pages one by one. Like my CDs, I will always buy my favorite books/authors as "real" books, and possibly also in ebook because it's great to know that I'm always carrying around a good friend (umm, I mean book) in my purse. I love walking into a bookstore and seeing people cracked open to a page or carrying a huge stack around ready to buy. To me, books will always be around in some kind of paper format, at least one can hope!

How do you organize your books and if you have an ereader, how do you handle reading "real" books vs. your ebooks?

5 comments:

Jonathon Arntson said...

I organize my books by young adult, middle grade, picture books, biographies, and the rest. Then within those categories, I usually ROYGBIV the titles or set them by height. None of this sounds very exciting, but I don't have so many books at the moment that I need to worry about it. I tried to find this book about organizing your home library, that John Green (Looking for Alaska) spoke about on his vlog, but I couldn't find the post! If I do find it I'll let you know. If someone else knows what I am talking about, let us know, it looked like a great book!

Leona said...

Everytime I get enough bookshelves to begin organizing my stash, we move!! I'm not big on the ereaders. I do have a few digitals on my laptop, but I prefer my paperbacks. LOL

I like to put my hardbacks on top of the bookshelf that holds the paperbacks of the same author, but as I've started collecting more hardbacks than I used to, it isn't working. So I have to think of something new.

Jonathon Arntson said...

I forgot about the eReader part.

I love them, covet them, and they they are cute, but I do not own one.

I have been resisting allocating funds for such a thing and I have a feeling that once I get one, I'll not care about it as much.

Although, if I end up changing my mind or someone gives me one, It'll be the NOOK from B&N, I hope.

Tracy Belsher said...

I don't have an ebook reader, so I can't comment on if I'd like that format or not. I'm intrigued by the idea though....so I might give it a go at some point.

As a library tech, I gotta admit you guys are killing me here. lol. If libraries were organized the way you're describing - whoa! ;0 In library school (kinda like superhero school....teehee...) we heard horror stories about collections being organized by colour (blue books unite!), by height/size (you guys have to let that one go - unless we're talking picture books - yes those should sit together), and even...price.

That being said, I do have my own collection shelved by genre/author (hcs/pbks together). The genres are paranormal (since they're the bulk of my books), classic lit, and everything else.

Jonathon Arntson said...

If public libraries were organized the way I described above, then no one would read! But, I was just telling what I have in my own space, which is only about three hundred books, not thousands.